


Falling Leaves, Catching Sunlight

by apollos



Series: Lost Children [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon Compliant, Coda, F/M, Ficlet Collection, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2018-12-15 22:59:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11815956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollos/pseuds/apollos
Summary: The quiet, still moments are those that hang in our minds like paintings in a museum, perfectly preserved.-Collection of ficlets from things that strike my fancy while rewatching Naruto but cannot stand on their own. Part of the "Lost Children" collection, where the fics that are robust enough on their own go as independent works. Characters/pairings/tags/etc to be added with new chapters.





	1. Your Euology Singer [SasuSaku]

**Author's Note:**

> this first chapter's title comes from atrophy by the antlers, one of my all-time favorite songs (and it works quite well for sasusaku.)
> 
> set during the original series' episode 98.

“Please let go of me.”

Sakura clears her throat and stands upright. Shame spills down the back of her dress, hot and liquidy. She looks behind her, but Naruto and the woman have left.

“I’m sorry, Sasuke-kun.”

Sasuke knits his fingers in his lap and stares at him. The room is quiet; in hospitals, it seems, the background noise  has always been siphoned out, leaving just the sounds of beating hearts. Sakura can hear hers, wonders if Sasuke can hear it too. He probably can, his senses are so well-attuned.

“How long have I been in here?” Sasuke asks, finally.

Sakura perks slightly. “A while,” she says. “You were injured when you went looking for Naruto.”

“Yes. I remember.”

It’s quiet for a while longer. Sakura looks around for something to busy herself with but finds nothing, she’s kept his room in such good order. She waits for him to dismiss her, but he doesn’t do that, either.

She takes a chance and steps closer to the bed.

“You can...sit down,” he says.

She can tell it pains him to say this.

“It’s okay, Sasuke-kun.” She smiles. “I’m fine just standing.”

More quiet. Maybe she will just excuse herself. This is the closest she has felt to Sasuke, but she does not wish to overstay her welcome. She wants to go home and sit in her room, think about what this all  _ means _ .

“Have you come here every day?” Sasuke looks up at her. His face is as plain as ever.

“Of course,” she says, cursing herself for being so eager. She sounds like a nurse that works at the hospital.

“Hmm.” He looks back down at his knitted hands. And then he says something that Sakura will carry pressed against her heart forever, will return to in the coming years when his absence becomes just too much:

“I...appreciate that. It was...kind. Now, please let me rest.”


	2. A Drop of Nectar on the Tongue [ZabuHaku]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haku, Zabuza, a flower and unresolved sexual tension.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haku uses they/them pronouns in this! i like the idea of haku as nonbinary, although i occasionally write him with he/him pronouns as well. but i think it this fic, they/them serves the character best. the inspiration for this came to me while thinking about another pairing in another fandom, and that i'd seen or read something about somebody drinking the nectar from flowers, though i can't remember where now. it literally might have been in a science class i took. i thought this collection was the best place to put this :)

“Have you ever tried this?” Haku’s heart shudders in their chest, the space between their ears seizing. It is a dangerous question, and risky—Zabuza is upset, they’d lost track of the ninja they had been hunting through these dark woods. The mist has descended as well, wetting both their faces.

“Huh?” Zabuza turns to look at Haku, brows furrowed.

Haku pinches the stem of the flower they had been bent over, inspecting. It is the correct flower. They rip it from the Earth as gently as possible, thanks passing over their lips, and then they extend a hand to Zabuza to show him the flower.

Zabuza nods, and Haku wonders why he is humoring them.

Haku moves their mask over their face—just slightly, just enough to expose their mouth. Zabuza’s eyes on trained on their lips, and there is that shudder of the heart, the seizure of the head. This has been happening, lately. Especially at night, huddled in the same tree for warmth, both speaking not a word of it in the morning. And of course, nothing is spoken now. Haku brings the flower to their lips, applying pressure on just the right point of the stem between thumb and forefinger, and a droplet of nectar leaks out, touches their outstretched tongue. They pull their tongue back into their mouths not before circling their lips with it, and then they lower the flower, still rolling the sensitive part of the stem between their fingers.

The silence extends, its fingers feeling at them the same at the mist, the mist and the silence becoming one and the same as if they were not already. Sweat pools on the back of Haku’s neck, in the various crevices of their body, the thing they think of as nothing more than a vessel—a porcelain vessel, ready to broken—preferably by Zabuza—and Haku cannot think any more. Their tongue has gone dry despite that second of sweetness, and it is possible that they’ve now crossed the invisible line.

Zabuza looks at the bunch of flowers that Haku had pulled theirs from. “These flowers?” he says.

Haku nods, not trusting themselves with anything else. While Zabuza bends to pick up a flower, they think of moving their mask back in place over their face—and they decide not to.

Zabuza lifts up with a flower, its petals looking a little more sad than Haku’s, drooping more slightly. He tugs down the bandages over his face with one finger, the other one holding the flower. He then repeats the process that he had watched Haku do so intently: lift, tongue out, squeeze, take the drop of nectar back into his mouth. His lips pursed, he holds himself for a few seconds, and then he stashes the flower in the waistband of his pants.

“How did you know to do that, kid?” he asks, and perhaps it is Haku’s imagination, but his voice is just the slightest bit huskier. The mist passes over his face, blurs the features that Haku strains to see.

“I know every edible thing in this forest,” Haku says, their voice merely above a whisper. “As well as their medicinal properties. It is important. It is—a part of my role.”

 Zabuza nods and takes a step forward. His hand goes to hold Haku’s head, resting on their jaw, fingers toying with the hard edge of the mask. Haku leaves their hands at their sides, the flower pressed tightly in one of the palms, the stem wearing thin and the petals threatening to fall. Zabuza leans in and his breath is foul with just the slightest twinge of that sweetness, that nectar, and through parted lips Haku can see the drop still on the tongue, not swallowed. Haku remains still.

Zabuza’s mouth moves past Haku’s own, to their exposed ear. He says one word: “Correct.”


	3. Strands [SasuSaku]

Sometime shortly before the Chuunin exams, Sasuke notices Sakura for the first time. He has certainly been aware of her, and at times annoyed by her, but she has been an accepted constant in his life, one that he had not felt the need to retake inventory of. She had transformed from classmate to teammate; that had been it, as far as he had been concerned.

They’re on the training field, exhausted after a long day of practice, lumped into a triangle. Naruto sleeps at their feet, twitching and snoring occasionally, while Sakura and Sasuke float between wakefulness and sleep themselves. Sasuke is laying on his side, the only position that relieves the pain of a nasty bruise on his other thigh, facing Sakura. She’s laying on her back, staring at the sky, her eyelids drooping over her eyes and then sliding open again.

First, probably due to his training as a ninja to notice even the most minute of details, Sasuke sees Sakura pulling grass with her fingers. She wraps strands around her index and middle fingers, then rips them up, runs her hands down the sides, then lets them back onto the ground. Sometimes she pauses, fingers the dirt, strokes the growing blades of grass, before ripping them out. Sasuke watches this process without being aware that he’s watching it, intently and lazily at the same time. When his observations come into focus, he thinks about her chakra control. It’s really quite good, though he’d never admit that out loud; he wonders how somebody can have such fine control over their bodily and chakra movements, and so little control over their emotions. It makes no sense in his head, something impossible to reconcile.

So he lets his eyes drift up her arms, and her hair is still long then, though she’s braided it hastily over her shoulders. In the setting sunlight, it’s more red than pink, the tones that would normally be cool warm. There are small strands of hair matted to her forehead with sweat, and a sudden scent memory of flowers comes to him, unwanted. Instead Sasuke thinks that if he gives it enough time, her hair will match the color of the sky. His will, too, he thinks—after the sun sets, and the warmth is gone.

When everybody else is gone, he is what is left.

“Sasuke-kun?” Sakura whispers. She turns her head, finds his eyes, red spreading across her face—

Despite the pain in his thigh, Sasuke brings himself to a sitting position and kicks Naruto in the shoulder to wake him. “Let’s go,” he says. “We’re done for the day.”


	4. Arigato [SasuSaku]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A crack in Sasuke's veneer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> takes place during the Infamous Sasuke and Sakura Scene of Episode 109. watching it now, having developed a little more emotional intelligence in my adulthood, it's so obvious how much sasuke struggles with leaving.

 It must be understood that, beneath the glossed veneer of indifference, Sasuke has put much work into managing his emotions. As a child, before the tragedy, he remembers _feelings_. Many feelings, in fact. Simple appreciation of life. Admiration of his older brother. The strive for his father’s attention. Happiness, joy, feeling in abundance as children do, hugging his mother around the waist, her hands in his hair, _Sasuke_ , her light voice. Bento boxes of rice and tomato and throwing shuriken towards straw targets at the academy. Exchanging smiles with other children, with members of his clan, running through the streets of the compound, footloose, fancy-free, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed—Sasuke remembers this, all of this, and it plays on a loop in his head when he lays in the sparse apartment among all the other orphans.

But: Sasuke is nothing if not strong. Sasuke has taught himself, has been a student of his own disciple, and he manages his emotion with as much accuracy as hitting a target with a shuriken. Only one is allowed, one that he feeds on: anger. Hatred. Everything else becomes that. (The best of psychologists, unavailable to an underfunded orphan, would tell you that anger is a secondary emotion. For all he knows, Sasuke hasn’t the slightest clue about this.)

Leaving Sakura, there is a moment, a silent moment, where Sasuke looks at her and allows himself to feel. In another life, one with a normal family, one where that unbridled childhood joy was able to run free and develop into the general ennui of adolescence—well. He lowers the gate, and with a slight break of the heart, he lets himself imagine. Sakura is smart, brave, strong, coming into her own. He can see himself feeling the strands of her cut hair, congratulating her for the steps forward she has taken. He can see himself taking her to get sweet dango and brushing away sugar on her lips, smiling, laughing. He can see the quiet companionship of studying side-by-side, shoulders brushing, of practicing calligraphy and arguing theory, and he can see a future involving children, children that will not grow up in this same unforgivable climate, children that will only know their mother’s light voice and their father’s approval. Children that will run through the streets of the Uchiha compound with their laughter trailing behind them like festival streamers.

He can see that maybe, just maybe, she would make him happy. Make every day fun.

When he thanks her, he thanks her twofold: for the kindness she has given him in this life, and the companionship in the imagined, impossible life.


End file.
